The Thirst for Knowledge
With Book Seven of Milton's Paradise Lost, Raphael is continuing his exposition on Satan's apostasy. The plan is to expose Adam and Eve to the wretched fate of those who cross God's will. The more he shed's light on the subject, however, the more Adam is inclined to ask for more information. He wants to know everything about the subject, as well as God and His creation.
However, while the taste of such knowledge leaves Adam yearning for more, there are boundaries. It is like a toddler eating a cookie... and eventually begging her mother for the rest of the jar. Is it a coincidence that the one thing Adam and Eve are not to touch is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Most readers know how the story ends: these toddlers are never going to be content with a few cookies. They're going in for the jar.
There is a statement in the Bible that is constantly being repeated throughout the Old Testament: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom." (In hindsight) Adam and Eve could never get true, contenting wisdom from something God had forbidden. It only made the longing for such knowledge worse, and left them with the baggage God had been trying to save them from.
Continuing the cookie metaphor, and saying that these two toddlers would have to deal with the stomach ache, is shallow. Their choice to blatantly disobey God in their thirst for knowledge poisoned them and their posterity until another could come and expiate their sin. In one stroke, their decision to choose knowledge over obedience broke the chain that held them to God.
There will always be things that humans long to know. With the fall, the thirst for knowledge was heightened not quenched. While searching for answers isn't wrong, God's will must be held first, before knowledge. Otherwise, the Truth that satisfies will never be found.
I commented on Emma L's and Emory's posts
Ah, how naive the character of Adam is shaping up to be. I often wonder about the style of writing that Paradise Lost is meant to copy. It seems written in the style of an epic, but ultimately tells the story of an Aristotelian tragedy, with some mythological elements sprinkled in here & there. With Raphael now departed from Adam & Eve, who's to say that the two don't eat the fruit in Book IX? Maybe that is the turning point where the focus of Milton's style turns from epic to a full-on tragedy? I suppose we shall have to (metaphorically, though literally works too) grab some popcorn & see where the next couple of books lead.
ReplyDeleteUs as humans will always long for more than we have. We are promised a life of eternity in Heaven, and all we have to do is obey God, but for some reason, we cannot do just that and be content. Sin will forever be a temptation for us, much like the the toddler and the cookie jar, but it is up to us to fight against it and follow the path that God has laid out for us.
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